Widening the Funnel: Land O’Lakes Evolves Approach And, Removes Some Risk For Regenerative Practices
Land O’Lakes is aiming to straighten the path as much as possible for more farmers to adopt more regenerative practices across their acres, and in doing so building a wider funnel of farmers who could enroll in carbon markets and other new revenue streams.
“We know there are barriers to growers making practice changes to more of a regenerative approach,” says Jason Weller, vice president, Truterra. “Often times, farmers are weighing the risk to the profitability in spending money and perhaps taking a yield drop. So we thought how we could take our agronomic data and help share that risk with a grower.”
As such, via the market access enrollment program farmers can be eligible for a $2/acre incentive for first-time practice changes including cover crops, reducing tillage, and more.
Another part of this announcement is how Land O’ Lakes is bringing together Truterra along with WinField United’s Advanced Acre Rx to provide a new advantage with a prescription for practice change, and then risk management as well.
“It’s a marriage between the science backed data driven approach with a particular decision, and we now have a way to use that to buffer the concerns a grower may have,” says Leah Anderson, vice president of sales – new markets at WinField United. “It’s a combination approach: a quality system to support the producer delivered through the trusted advisor at the local retailers to give the farmer confidence and on the backend there’s a revenue assurance.”
Advanced Acre Rx provides a warranty to offset part of the risk of this practice change implementation. The $2/acre is meant to be an incentive and to show the company has “skin in the game” with lowering the overall risk, increasing the chance for a positive experience, and offset at least some of the cost for the practice change and time/inputs/labor required.
Advanced Acre Rx was launched three years ago with 123,000 acres enrolled in 2021, and so far in 2022 567,000 acres have been enrolled via 80 participating retailers. The company says it has the goal of 1 million acres enrolled for 2023. So far, the most popular program in Advanced Acre Rx has involved fungicide application and using WinField United Answer Plot data on response to scores on hybrids.
There are 50 retailers in the Truterra network.
“From the beginning of Truterra we have worked to help farmers assess their opportunities for improvements to their fields. And we can help them quantify that for them, and through the quantification of prescription agronomy, we help them realize an incremental credit such as carbon,” Weller says.
Both leaders say the new approach is to help simplify things for farmers—particularly those who are “carbon curious.”
“When WinField United and Truterra come together, growers can have the opportunities to be paid for how their manage their fields as much as yields. What we have is different—6 million data points and the factorial analysis we’ve applied in the Answer Plots,” Anderson says. “Whether or not the grower participates in the outcome based markets—this program drive more productivity and more profitability on the farm.”
Anderson adds the sizzle to the new approach is in keeping the agronomic decision local with local support via hundreds of sales agronomists and crop consultants. Earlier in August, at their Elite Advisors Summit, Truterra retailers had multi-day agronomic trainings in conservation, soil health and more.
“We have been hard at work to raise the bar with expertise,” Weller says. “Farmers were asking for answers about these topics, and we’ve had the runway to now build out these programs.”
Weller says this program will help instill longer term success with change practices.
“With other programs that ask farmers to bear all the risk, my concern is what happens a year or two from now when the farmers could have had a rough experience and the field is effected for years,” Weller says.
